Miner 2049er
Platform: TI-99/4A
Region: USA
Media: Cartridge
Controller: Joystick
Genre: Action - Platform - Puzzle
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1983
Developer: Big Five Software
Publisher: Tigervision
Players: 1
Designer: Bill Hogue
_________________________

You play the part of Bounty Bob, and it is your mission to explore every inch of an abandoned mine. As you walk over floor sections in the mine, the floor will change color. When all of the floor sections have been changed in color, you can move on to the next, more challenging level. To reach all of the floor sections, you will need to figure out how to get there.

You can jump (be careful not to fall too far though, or you will be squished), climb up and down ladders, and use different transportation devices that can be found on the levels (such as an elevator, slides, a springboard, or a cannon!) Wandering around the mine are numerous radioactive creatures which get in Bounty Bob's way. Also scattered throughout the mines are various artifacts left behind; if Bounty Bob collects one of these, the creatures will temporarily become vulnerable. If Bounty Bob runs into one of the creatures in this state the creature will be destroyed, but if he runs into a creature while it is glowing Bounty Bob will be destroyed.

There is a total of ten different levels, and to complete them all you will need quick reflexes as well as to figure out a unique strategy for each level.

Trivia:

Miner 2049er was ported to a wide-range of platforms thanks to an early, innovative use of licensing. Big Five produced the original game, and licensed it to other companies to port to other platforms. Prior to this, most games were ported by the same company that developed them.

Miner 2049er was created by Big Five Software in 1982 and ported to a large array of systems (through different manufacturers). The game made its way to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 400/800, Colecovision, Commodore 64, VIC-20, and Gameboy just to name a few. The goal was to put Miner 2049er on every system that could reproduce it faithfully, which is the reason there are so many ports of this title to numerous systems. To read more about the history of Miner 2049er check out The Miner 2049er Information Page.

Miner 2049er won a number of awards back in the 80's for its addictive game play and unique concept. Three of the awards it won were the "1984 Electronic Game of the Year" (Electronic Games Magazine), "1984 Outstanding Software Award" (Creative Computing), and "1983 Best Seller Award" (Softsel).  Pictures of these awards and more can be found at the official site of Big Five Software.

The TI-99/4A version of Miner 2049er only contains 8 of the 10 original screens. Most other ports included all 10 and the Colecovision version even added an extra level to bring its total to 11. The reason for the exclusion of 2 levels (Stations 1 and 8) probably had to do with memory constraints more than anything else.

The first thing you might notice about the TI-99/4A version of Miner 2049er is its weird cartridge shape. This is due to the fact that it plugs into the system's expansion port (where the Speech Synthesizer plugs into) instead of the normal cartridge port. Most likely Tigervision did this because TI would not license out its GROM chips to many 3rd party developers. The GROM chip allowed for greater amounts of memory to be put onto a single cartridge, and without the chip you were limited to 8K of ROM. Therefore, in order to fit Miner 2049er onto a cartridge Tigervision made it plug into the expansion port, which allowed for more memory than standard cartridges.

There is a small square hole on the side of the Miner 2049er cartridge where a start button could go. However, Tigervision only put start buttons on their Espial cartridges which were released later in 1984 (after Miner 2049er). Interestingly, the Espial manual tells the player to push the red button on the cartridge in order to start the game (and not to go through the cartridge selection screen). This leads one to believe that the start button was a way around TI's Version 2.2 consoles which blocked 3rd party cartridges from appearing on the selection screen. By using a button to start (and also reset) the game it completely bypassed any GROM check that the system might have had. Pretty ingenious idea!


http://www.mobygames.com/game/ti-994a/miner-2049er
